


a wreath above her head

by nychta



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Dehumanization, Flowers, Self-Harm, no beta reader no editing we die in sannikov land, the physical horror of loving what's eating you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nychta/pseuds/nychta
Summary: The attic chorused the birth of flowers.A cycle, according to Jane, which broiled over itself until something rose from muddled grounds. At least she called it grounds; where else would the worms grow? She never noticed the beginning - never caught a drift of pungent lilacs under her nostrils. For all she knew and loved, her modest home stretched narrow ceilings for one owner. Then, an owner and two white strings. A dozen of squirms beneath her shoes.Jane lost count at some point and settled for a hive.|| worms aren't the only living thing jane blooms.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	a wreath above her head

**Author's Note:**

> tw for self-harm, suicidal ideation && overall flower-ish/worm body horror!!

The attic chorused the birth of flowers.

A cycle, according to Jane, which broiled over itself until something rose from muddled grounds. At least she called it grounds; where else would the worms grow? She never noticed the beginning - never caught a drift of pungent lilacs under her nostrils. For all she knew and loved, her modest home stretched narrow ceilings for one owner. Then, an owner and two white strings. A dozen of squirms beneath her shoes.

Jane lost count at some point and settled for a hive.

Autumn announced the bloom of light violet shrubs: a pair burst from her lovely eye, a quintet through her cheek, hundreds crunched by her teeth. Concern stirred Jane for days inside four walls, as she pictured the banquet spread for worms. Muscle memory urged years of knitting into quivering fingers whenever she pricked a worm with her needle. She had almost expected the red surge of pain whenever an accidental stab reached for the petals. But it was always the worms. They writhed - they shrieked like children chastised by a heart-stricken mother.

The rapid swing of her holed-up hands sifted inside the kitchen cupboard. She knocked jarred alaea salt, spilled brown sugar free, until she finally yanked bottled isopropyl alcohol out.

She could do this - she shouldn’t do this.

Worms stitched her eyes shut from the sizzling breach of chemicals and flesh. Wretched and vicious, yet protective of her. A neighbor rapped on her door a while later, softly asking if she was alright.

Jane recalled he inhabited a two-floor house, past the end corner of her streets, and wondered just how loud her scream pierced the sunlight. Her posture tensed when he mentioned millions of screams, not just one. She tapped a nail across her seemingly unblemished skin.

Something underneath tapped back.

Her last day in Good Energies concurred jokes about her ethanol breath. Aged wine and the stream of the Thames fared off a better disguise than the endless crawl across her bones. She’d never been alone. The shop welcomed varieties of believers and practitioners, splaying their wonder over finely-shaped crystals. Yet, it was just her attic and her. Theirs, as well. Lilacs pressed her palms open and she hunched past the counter, eyes widened. Her attention leapt from the pair of customers demanding amethysts to the kid who often attempted to paint-spray the glass outdoors. No reason to catch other pairs of eyes.

Her throat bobbed with hesitation as she began to pluck the raw petal away and then -

A light thud over wood sprang her upward, her arms crossed behind her.

The man across the counter didn’t fit there. She didn’t know why; merely listened to the thrum of murmurs in her tissues. Jane would have laughed them off as possessive, if she didn’t have the faint impression he would flicker in and out of existence. Like a candle persistent against the blow.

Leaves tantalized the heavy swell of her tongue as the procedure unfolded: ask his name, if he considered himself drawn to any sort of energy, explain the alignments of crystals. Now and then, Jane remembered him both as Oliver and as her saddest client. He didn’t purchase anything, simply appeared to dwell in the store to gaze at her with such somber eyes. If there wasn’t a thriving nest inside her, she would have granted the irony of asking Oliver if he was alright.

She even considered asking him if he had an attic to open, if he understood how many skewered roofs could he house.

That evening her boss found her unsnarling roots threaded with worms out of her veins.

She quitted before they could fire her.

For a vibrant propaganda of Good Energies, she had never experienced any. Spiritualism and stamina and things she couldn’t grasp didn’t afford the best financial status. Some sixth sense, some invisible presence Jane pretended to sway for because that was the kind of faith anyone as reduced as she would aspire for. Omens of prosperous futures had offered her nothing but a new home - a conceptual one she didn’t want to step in.

Jane furiously scrubbed lilacs and worms and dried copper from her hands, as if they wouldn’t hop back to her open palms.

The upcoming weeks wrecked in the daily phone calls of her landlord, the off-kilter hum of electricity, and a shower half-brimmed with worms. Nights tearing off petals and worms gathered a mess that no drainage could gulp. She heard complaints that demanded the silence of her wailing kids. Those wasteful hours of explaining she bore no children boiled her down.

The shop didn’t necessarily rob her of precious time, rather of time outdoors. But as she dwelled inside her home and near the attic, she resolved to older habits. Temples often surged from houses, and thus, she guided herself to folding bedsheets, sweeping floors - beckoning a brighter, skillful Jane. Worms dropped from the holes whenever she shook them off their lilacs. As she stomped cries out of them, she realized there was no other idealized Jane.

There should have been one before; but now?

One look down at the splattered broth.

Remains could sing, too: they chanted howls about her beauty, about her kindness. An itch blazed as a wave joined and flowers burst anew. Jane trembled her broom free from her grasp and dug her nails inside her worm-ridden ears.

She still heard them sing how she was bright and skillful _now_.

Their opera never pitched lower, if anything they slung higher as she pressed sweaty fingers over her phone. She needed another source of sound, something else that wasn’t just the splatter of rain across windows. When she called her family, the worms drowned their voices - the worms were her family now. When she cried for friends, they yelled back at her to tune down her screams. Only when Jane attempted a college classmate did they wring themselves into quiet. It was just an old acquaintance; no attachments, they sang.

Andrea Nunis scraped a smooth voice across the line. Jane sighed, comforted by this foreign song, and a couple of lilacs flourished past her lips. Months of worms snapping inside layers of skin had grown her ears accustomed to that very sound. She delighted in the uncanny melodies of human pretense. For she knew: Andrea had once phoned her, years ago, throat quivered about Italy and isolation and people. They weren’t even friends, yet she claimed she had no hand to hold, just Jane’s number. Difference didn’t overtake their past from their future as Jane brought it up. Her worms tangled into each other with anticipation.

Andrea went very quiet, almost dead.

Slowly, she asked Jane what she wanted.

Jane almost felt bad as the call ended in an awkward silence and the brief mention of an Institute.

But the worms applauded her with intelligence and cunning, and the shy lilacs bloomed as vivacious as ever.

Her fingers pricked thorns as she stifled them with splotched linen. Decomposition wasn’t a stranger to her flesh, yet the sight itself gagged her strength. She tied the scarf around her neck until none of her blossoms could breathe. The brim of a hat dipped to her concealment and, accompanied with far too many infants, she swept inside the Magnus Institute.

Soft mauve light bled across floor-to-ceiling windows and patterned carpets swirled fantasies. If the worms didn’t recoil much, perhaps she would have appreciated the academia better. They whispered in quick successions about a malevolent graveyard and about relentless watchers. She reasoned fear wouldn’t harbor a house between her ribs if the lilac past her pupil prevented her from catching sight of other eyes. Either way, the worms hissed in joy: they finally ventured inside the enemy’s maw. Jane held no opposition as to trail farther in.

The elderly woman who received her labelled her a dear. Even as she smacked a pen in her feeble fingers, stepped back in cautious calculation, and settled across the glass pane. The worms seethed against her. They spat about Archivists and chaos - Jane wouldn’t have speculated dread out of a stranger. Still, once, she didn’t speculate much about herself. Ink trembled in the haste of sprouted flowers; that’s when the worms fed the most. She darted the leftovers of her eyes forward. The woman - _that vile Archivist_ \- conceded an encouraging smile.

She knew.

Jane stopped scribbling.

Whether the worms or her own thoughts conjured the idea, both sharpened the knowledge in riveted ey-

Eyes.

A huff of a blight ensued the rage of her handwriting: she slammed the statement down and surged up, away from the uncommon hitch of so many eyes. Jane gritted the anthers between her teeth. She couldn’t tell what disappointed her the most: if everyone knew about her attic yet not enough to aid her close it; if the worms were right, of course they were right about everything; or if an allegation about herself would never breach apart who she used to be and who she was.

The worms named her _theirs_ and beautiful and sagacious.

For once, she believed them.

She encouraged them, even, to murmur about how sweet and well-mannered she graced. Her flowers spun in coy ruptures across her throat. A worm burrowed the gap between her trachea and lilacs, slithered up her eardrum and named her immaculate. Jane nodded along, with the slightest hitch of a flattered laugh. They loved her. They loved her so much, they didn’t notice the lack of requital until she stabbed them with her needle. The bouquet in her ear stained red and poured out rivers. No one was off to help her; not any friends, or family, or deity, just the constant plunge in and out. The whole colony wavered in agony and clamored her name. Jane hadn’t ever pictured herself with children; she would make sure to scheme that image into reality.

Her knees flailed the frail bloom of petals: her fingers drew absent swirls across the fountain beneath her head. Her breath rasped out the swarm of restless worms. They contorted in a slick chaos, slashing her flowers and swallowing her roots as if that would pull her attention. Her eyelids dropped heavy and Jane wondered, half-hopeful and half-foolish, if by the end of it her body would ever resemble what it once was. Even if it didn’t, it would suffice if it stumbled out as anything; not an attic for anyone but herself.

Jane probably dreamt the scurry of eight legs.

The distant caress of a soothing voice.

A spiderweb sketched open by careful hands.

The desperate knock on her door that led to the withdrawal of scampering limbs.

Definitely a hallucination: else it wouldn’t have rivaled her loveliest lilacs.

When she woke up, the white flare of a hospital burned her eyes. Silver blades flashed between robes and they sliced for her leaves. Jane winced. Not her flowers, anything but her flowers. A lonesome writhe inside her mind dug the thought of her many names: of her sovereignty and her refinement. Sweet nothings to indulge in. Jane tensed her broken jaw and thrashed as a cold grip tightened in the search of a blossom. The worms that furrowed her forehead cried out.

In a single, lucid moment, Jane quitted her fight and realized: they never wept for their own lives. They sobbed for hers, torn apart by her own hands.

Just once, Jane thought through the allure of anaesthesia, just once would she offer a shred of her prepotency.

Jane closed her eyes.

Jane opened the attic.

Two years later, Jane crawled along the Institute.

The worms called her vigorous and effervescent, to which she nodded; to which she reciprocated by calling them exuberant and joyful.

Withered fingers dove through a hole across her collarbone and plucked out her most delicate lilac.

Jane stared at the numerous floors of the Institute, buzzing with a quiet sort of life.

It was polite to drop flowers at a funeral.

**Author's Note:**

> what really strikes me while writing this piece is that the Corruption is probably the best and worst thing to ever happen to Jane.  
> best girl deserved better than what she got ://  
> still, i might or might not elaborate with miss cane's appearance ;)
> 
> hmu at tumblr @nychtaa if anyone feels like yelling about jane (and overall, the whole traumatized cast of tma)


End file.
